Font ResizeA few steps away, read a list of 5,000 people who were lynched, some for merely speaking their mind.
Welcome to the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore.
Tucked in the basement - appropriately, says founder Joanne Martin - the slave ship and lynching exhibits are the museum's most compelling displays. Wax figures are stuffed shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee in the slave ship. A lynched and burned husband and wife - her unborn baby being ripped from her womb - are only steps away. Only in the basement can visitors view black history's darkest moments.
Youngsters have cried at the slave ship display. Anger boils up during stories of lynchings and the press clippings that show no national anti-lynching law was ever passed. A sign at the top of the steps leading to the graphic lynching display suggest that no one under 12 view the display.
The 150 other figures, from Colin Powell to Jackie Robinson to John Henry, show a brighter side of black history - the progress and the promise.
"If we fail to make a connection between the past and the present, none of what we do
About 275,000 people, about half of them school groups and most from outside Maryland, visit the north Baltimore museum each year. By comparison, the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg attracts about 300,000 people. Martin says that 30 percent of the visitors to the Baltimore museum are not black.
"African-American history is American history," she says. "We need to embrace it all and appreciate it all."
The oldest figures are of Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded Bethune-Cookman College; Civil War-era abolitionist Frederick Douglass; anti-slavery crusader John Brown; and underground railroad organizer Harriet Tubman.
Each figure costs at least $12,000, made by different teams of sculptors from throughout the country.
The most recent addition to the collection is Myrtle Tyler Faithful, a Howard University sorority founder. Louis Armstrong, Marian Anderson and Marvin Gaye will soon be added, as will heart surgeon Dr. Daniel Hale Williams and stars of Negro League baseball. Today's figures include scientists, politicians, athletes, activists, youth leaders and inventors.
Now covering 15,000 square feet, the museum will soon triple in size. The museum owns the entire block of properties along East North Avenue. Construction will begin within a year to build a community center, library, food court, cultural shops and a library. The building will be built in three phases and will cost $60 million when finished in 2008. Most of the funding will come from public sources, including $15 million from the state of Maryland. Other moneys will come from city and state bonds, foundations and various fund-raisers. The museum's success, Martin says, should be a catalyst for regrowth for this mostly black neighborhood. The museum opened in 1983, and it moved to the North Avenue location - an old firehouse - in 1988. Some larger pieces - including the elephant with the conqueror and warrior Hannibal Barca exhibit and the polar bear with arctic explorer Matthew Henson's exhibit - had to be placed inside the museum before the large garage doors could be permanently closed and covered up on the first and second floors.
But the most compelling, most unforgettable and most gruesome pieces are in the basement. Visitors get a sickening sense of going down into the belly of a ship. And in the lynching exhibit, they feel the depth of emotion and lack of humanity.
IF YOU GO
The Great Blacks in Wax Museum is about 52 miles from downtown York. Drive south on Interstate 83 to Mount Royal Avenue (Exit 6) and north Route 1. Drive east about 1.5 miles to 1601 E. North Ave. Admission is $6.80 for adults, $4.80 for children ages 12-17 and $4.55 for children 2-11. Parking is along the street or across the street at the grocery store parking lot. For details, visit http://www.greatblacksinwax.org or call 410-563-3404.
